Douglas Sant Anna da Cunha
BHP (NYSE:BHP) and Vale (NYSE:VALE) made a ~$1.4B offer to settle a class action lawsuit in the U.K. brought by hundreds of thousands of victims of the 2015 Mariana tailings dam rupture, one of Brazil’s worst environmental disasters, Financial Times reported Thursday.
The proposed sum would comprise ~$800M in compensation for victims of the dam accident and $600M for legal fees to resolve the High Court lawsuit, according to the report.
The offer reportedly was forwarded at a meeting in New York in June with the British law firm representing the claimants, Pogust Goodhead, and their main funders, U.S. hedge fund Gramercy.
The ~640K claimants in the class action lawsuit have sought as much as £36B in damages, in what is thought to be the biggest class action in English legal history, from the deadly dam rupture at an iron ore complex near the town of Mariana operated by Samarco, a venture jointly owned by BHP (NYSE:BHP) and Vale (NYSE:VALE).
The mining companies argue the London proceedings are no longer necessary following a settlement with public authorities in Brazil last year that takes their total indemnity bill to ~$30B over 20 years.
Pogust Goodhead brought the legal action in the U.K. on the basis that BHP (BHP) had a parent company in London at the time of the incident and because of the slow pace of Brazil’s court system.